WOLLONGONG MOULD REMOVAL SERVICES
Commercial Water Extraction in Wollongong
Getting the water off your floor is the easy part. Getting rid of it legally is where businesses get caught, because pumping contaminated water into a stormwater drain is an offence, not a shortcut.
What To Do Right Now
Isolate the water at the mains or the affected riser. On a multi-tenanted building that may mean calling building management rather than doing it yourself.
Get an electrician to isolate wet circuits, or kill power at the board if it is dry and safe. Commercial switchboards, three-phase gear and wet distribution boards are not a DIY job.
Move stock, records and equipment up and out. Pallets, benches, anything off the floor. Cardboard wicks water metres up in an hour.
Photograph everything before you move it, including stock and serial numbers. Your business insurer will want it and so will your landlord.
Do not send anyone in to squeegee it out the roller door. Where that water goes is a legal question, covered below.
Call us and tell us your trading hours. Half the job is planning around them.
Call us immediately if:
- An office, warehouse, factory, workshop or clinic has taken water
- A sprinkler, hot water unit, chiller or plumbing riser has failed
- A storm or roof failure has put water through a commercial roof or wall
- Stock, records, plant or a fitout are sitting in water
- You have staff who cannot safely be on site until it is dealt with
- Building management, a landlord or an insurer needs this documented properly
Send the form and we will ring you back.
FREE INSPECTION, NO OBLIGATION
We will call you back personally to arrange a time.
Trusted Commercial Water Extraction in Illawarra, NSW
Downtime is the second emergency. The water is the first one, but every hour the doors are shut, or the warehouse is unusable, or the office is uninhabitable, is money leaving the business at a rate that usually dwarfs the restoration invoice.
A commercial water job is all about containing the wet section, keeping the rest of the site operating, and work around trading hours instead of through them.
We have been doing water damage and mould work across the Illawarra for 15 years. The team at Wollongong Mould Cleaning & Removal is the single point of contact from the first call through to the final reading, and they coordinate the licensed trades the job needs rather than handing you three numbers and wishing you luck.
Extraction, Drying or Full Water Remediation?
Extraction and drying is the first 24 to 72 hours: water out, moisture mapped, equipment running, site contained so the unaffected areas keep working. That is this page.
Remediation is what happens if the water sat long enough that mould started, or if the water was contaminated to begin with. That is commercial mould remediation, which also covers the work health and safety duty you carry as a PCBU and the lease questions that come with it.
Most sites need extraction now and a decision about remediation in a week. If you are not sure which you are looking at, that is what the free assessment is for.
Not a commercial lease but a retail one? A shop, cafe, salon or anything in a shopping centre has statutory rights that offices and warehouses do not, and those are on retail water extraction.
How We Handle a Commercial Water Job
We scope around your trading hours before we start
The first conversation is about what has to keep running. That decides the containment plan, not the other way round. Instead of rushing in, we need to plan the next days/weeks to stop & contain the leak before anything else.
We contain the flooding first, then extract
Hoardings and poly to isolate the wet zone so the rest of the site stays open and dry. We’ve got vans fukl of submersible pumps and truck-mounted extraction for the volume, which on a commercial floor plate is a different order of magnitude.
We map the moisture across the whole floor plate
We use meters and thermal imaging to know exactly where the water has gone. On a slab-on-ground warehouse, water tracks under racking and vinyl and stops being visible long before it stops being there. Just because it’s not visible, doesn’t mean it’s not wet – our moisture meters tell us that.
We dispose of the water properly
Covered in detail below. It is the part most operators skip but we ensure proper disposal of the water in question.
We dry to a measured target and monitor daily
Commercial dehumidifiers and air movers sized for the volume, with readings logged so we can track progress. We operate by numbers and work until those readings are within our safe limits. See structural drying and dehumidification for more information.
We work after hours where that keeps you trading
Nights and weekends where it makes the difference. It carries a loading and we tell you what it is before we do it but at times it can be the difference between a water problem that last a few days and weeks.
We document for your insurer and your landlord
Two audiences, and they demand different things. Photos, moisture logs, water category, scope, and final readings – we’ll provide it all so you have peace of mind when dealing with both the landlord & insurance company.
Where the Water Goes When We Pump It Out
Ask most people how you get 8,000 litres off a warehouse floor and they will say you squeegee it out the roller door. Which is fine, right up until the water is not clean.
Section 120 of the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 (NSW) makes it an offence to pollute waters, and “pollute waters” includes causing or permitting waters to be polluted. Stormwater drains in the Illawarra are not connected to treatment. What goes in the gutter outside your unit at Unanderra or Kembla Grange arrives, more or less unchanged, in the creek and then the ocean.
So the question on a commercial water job is not just how fast can you get it out. It is what is in it.
- Clean water from a supply line or a sprinkler is usually straightforward.
- Water that has crossed a warehouse floor has picked up whatever was on that floor. Forklift oil, dust, chemical residue, packaging dye.
- Water through a workshop, kitchen or plant room is a trade waste question, and Sydney Water regulates what commercial premises can discharge to sewer.
- Anything from a drain, a grease trap or a sewer line is Category 3 and is handled as sewage cleanup.
We work out which one you have before the pump goes on, contain it if it needs containing, and dispose of it to the right place with the right approval. If it needs to go to sewer under a trade waste arrangement, that is a conversation with Sydney Water on 13 20 90, and we will have it rather than leaving it to you.
The honest version of why this matters to you and not just to us: the penalties under the POEO Act attach to the occupier of the premises as readily as to the contractor. A cheap operator who empties your flooded workshop into the gutter has not saved you money. They have moved a liability onto your ABN and driven away.
This is general information and not legal advice. The authority is the NSW EPA, and for trade waste it is Sydney Water.
Want to know what you have got before you commit to anything? Call (02) 4093 0541.
We Have Experience In Office Spaces, Warehouses, Industrial Sites and Strata
Offices & professional suites
The problem is rarely the volume, it is the fitout itself. Carpet tiles, cable trays under raised floors, plasterboard partitions and paper records. We contain by floor or by suite so the rest of the tenancy keeps working, and we deal with the under-floor cavity that everyone forgets is there.
Warehouses and industrial units
Big floor plates, slab on ground, and stock on wooden pallets that wicks water upward. The priority is volume extraction and getting racking bays back into service in the right order. Machinery and switchboards need to get isolated by a licensed electrician before we work near them.
Workshops, kitchens and plant rooms
These are the trade waste sites. In a nutshell, what is on the floor decides how the water is handled. Getting that wrong is the expensive mistake as mentioned above.
Strata and multi-tenanted buildings
As we know, water rarely respects a boundary – it follows the easiest path. When it crosses from one lot into another, or from common property into a lot, you have an owners corporation question sitting on top of an extraction job. We document which areas were affected and when, because that record is what settles who pays. The mould side of that is covered by our strata mould remediation service.
We provide more specific information based on what caused the damage:
- Burst pipe water damage for a failed riser, flexi or supply line
- Storm damage restoration for roof and wall failures
- Flood damage restoration for water across the ground
- Leaking roof water damage for the slow ones that have been going a while
How Much Does Commercial Water Extraction Cost?
The assessment is free and you get a written scope before anything starts. Commercial work prices by area rather than by tier, because the variable that matters is square metres of wet floor plate and how many days the drying runs.
| Stage | What it covers | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency assessment | Attend, make safe, moisture map, written scope | Free most of the time |
| Small job | A single suite, office or unit, contained, extracted and dried | $800 to $1,500 |
| Extraction & drying by area | Larger floor plates, priced per square metre of affected area | $45 to $90 per sqm |
| After-hours loading | Nights, weekends and public holidays so you keep trading | 25% to 100% depending on the window |
| Contaminated water handling | Containment, correct disposal, trade waste arrangement where required | Quoted on site |
What moves the price for this type of project is:
- Square metres of wet area
- How long the water sat
- What was in it?
- How much stock and fitout has to be worked around?
- How many days the drying runs.
The after-hours loading reflects award penalty rates, which run 15% for evenings, 30% overnight, 50% Saturday, 100% Sunday and 150% public holidays. In practice most jobs land between 25% and 100%.
These are Illawarra market rates for scoping, not a quote.
How Our Local Illawarra Knowledge Helps
The industrial stock through Unanderra, Kembla Grange, Port Kembla and Albion Park Rail is mostly slab on ground with steel frame and metal cladding, and water in those buildings runs a long way flat before anyone notices. The older commercial buildings in the Wollongong CBD and along Crown Street are a different problem as they’re often multi-storey, shared risers, and a failure on level three that first gets noticed when it’s visible on level 1.
We are here in Wollongong. After a storm the interstate names work through Sydney first, and a business waiting in that queue is a business closed for another two days. Being twenty minutes from Port Kembla instead of ninety minutes from Sydney is the whole argument.
We cover Wollongong, Unanderra, Port Kembla, Kembla Grange, Warrawong, Fairy Meadow, Corrimal, Dapto, Shellharbour, Albion Park and Kiama.
Get a Crew On Site Today
Tell us what is wet and when you need to be trading again. We will scope it, contain it, and work around your hours. 24/7, free assessment.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you work outside our trading hours?
Yes, and on most commercial jobs that is the point. Nights, weekends and public holidays where it keeps you open. It carries a loading tied to award penalty rates and we tell you the figure before we do the work, not after.
Can we just pump the water out the roller door ourselves?
If it is clean water from a supply line, often yes.
If it has crossed a workshop, warehouse or kitchen floor, be careful. Section 120 of the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 (NSW) makes polluting waters an offence, and stormwater in the Illawarra runs to the creeks and the ocean without treatment.
Ring us and describe what is on the floor before you start pumping.
Who pays, us or the landlord?
It depends on your lease and on what failed.
As a rough rule, the building and its services are the landlord’s and your fitout and stock are yours, but leases vary and the make-good clause complicates it.
What we can do is document precisely what was affected and when, which is what the argument usually turns on.
Get your lease in front of a lawyer for the actual answer.
Does business insurance cover water damage?
Property cover usually responds to sudden damage.
Business interruption is a separate section and often has its own conditions and an indemnity period, so check whether you hold it. Gradual damage from a long-running leak is commonly excluded but your specific PDS decides it.
General information, not insurance advice.
How long will our site be out of action?
Extraction is usually day one.
Drying typically runs three to seven days depending on volume and materials, and we contain it so the unaffected parts of the site stay open throughout.
We dry to a reading rather than to a fixed number of days, because pulling equipment early is how you get a mould claim three weeks later.
Do you handle sites with machinery and three-phase power?
We work around them, and we do not work near live wet electrical gear.
A licensed electrician isolates before we start. Jake or Daniel coordinate that rather than leaving you to arrange it.
Do you do strata and common property jobs?
Yes.
The extra work on those is documentation, because when water crosses from common property into a lot, or between lots, the record of what was wet and when is what settles who pays.